summitspringsfarm.net

Summer is officially here! Your CSA share this week contains the following:

1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1/4 lb bag of arugula -OR- 1 bunch of Red Russian kale
1 head of lettuce
1 head of Napa cabbage -OR- 1 head of bok choy
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes
1 kohlrabi
3/4 lb of sugar snap peas -OR- 1 pint of strawberries -OR- 1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 bunch of herbs: Sage -OR- Oregano -OR- Basil
1 bunch of garlic scapes

Bread shareholders received a loaf of Honey Oatmeal bread this week, a dense loaf perfect for toasting and featuring Maine-grown organic oats and local honey!

The plethora of choices this week reflects the strength of the growing season so far.  In other words, everything is happening at once!  We have so many things starting to come in…greenhouse tomatoes, snap peas, snow peas, scallions, garlic scapes, etc. and things like salad greens and strawberries are peaking.  Good news all around!  Garlic scapes are new this week, and if you’re unfamiliar with them, you’re in for a treat.  The scape is actually the stem and undeveloped flower of the garlic plant.  Plucking them off before they flower directs the plant’s energies back down into the ground to form large, well-developed heads, and the scapes themselves are delicious.  They taste like garlic but are much milder than the cloves.  Garlic scapes can be chopped up raw and used in salads, or sauteed with pasta or in a stir fry…they can essentially be used for anything you would normally use garlic cloves for.  Our favorite: garlic scape pesto.  Bok choy is another asian veggie, and it is excellent in stir fries.  Kohlrabi is one of the stranger veggies you’ll see, out of this world both in appearance and taste.  Try it grated raw in salads or as part of a slaw.  We love to shred it and sautee it for 10-15 minutes with butter and fresh sage.

Enjoy your veggies and don’t forget that our next potluck is tomorrow night, Wednesday 6/23, from 6 - 8 PM.  Come on over and bring a dish to share.  As always, we will try to eat outside, weather permitting, and get a bonfire going if inspiration hits.  Bring along chairs and/or blankets for eating and lounging.  Musical instruments are also encouraged!

And, we’re off!  Your very first CSA share of the season contains the following:

1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1/4 lb bag of arugula -OR- 1 head of Napa cabbage
1 head of lettuce
1/2 lb bag of spinach
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes
1 bunch of Red Russian kale or Winterbore green kale
1 pint of strawberries
1 bunch of herbs: Sage -OR- Oregano
1 herb seedling
 
Bread share folks received a loaf of “John’s Daily Bread” this week, a whole wheat/white wheat combo perfect for sandwiches or toasting.

A few notes on the bounty:
Our salad mix is made up of three or four different varieties of lettuce plus arugula, mizuna, tat soi, senposai, baby Red Russian kale, and baby red mustard. Enjoy! There’s nothing quite like a salad of fresh, spicy arugula with a simple vinaigrette and maybe a handful of walnuts and some feta or goat cheese. Don’t be afraid to apply a little heat to arugula, either. Last week Sonya made pork chops and served each chop on a bed of arugula. The meat wilted the greens perfectly, and the flavors together were superb. I also put arugula on a pizza recently, and THAT was very good! Napa cabbage, or Chinese cabbage, is great raw or cooked. It can be the base of a wonderful Asian-style salad or chopped and thrown into stir-fries or homemade eggrolls. Ideas for what to do with this unique green and recipes in general for the vast majority of the veggies we grow here at Summit Sprimngs Farm can be found on our Recipes! page. Just look around, find the veggie you’re curious about, click on it, and view some recipes. We’re constantly revising and expanding our recipe index, so please e-mail us or comment on the blog with any favorite recipes of your own!

Also, a note about our strawberries. You may notice that many of the berries this week are small and a bit misshapen. The reason for this is because of the two or three nights of rather heavy frost we had back in the second half of May. The strawberries had already begun to flower, and the frost damaged those blossoms, resulting in the damaged fruit that followed. Things should improve as the strawberry season rolls along since the fruit we’ll be picking will have appeared from flowers that were put out after the frost.  Note also that those funny little berries are still delicious…the damage is all cosmetic!

Well, we made it! This is week #20 for the CSA, and this will be our last distribution for the ‘09 season. Hard to believe that the first pick-up was waaaay back on June 9th! Your final share of the season includes the following:

2.5 lb bag of red and green cabbage
2 lb bag of carrots
1 lb bag of parsnips
1 lb bag of beets -OR- turnips
1 0.4 lb bag of Swiss chard -OR- Red Russian kale -OR- vitamin greens -OR- 1 bag of kohlrabi -OR- 2 daikon radishes (whew!)
1 bunch of cilantro -OR- dill

We’re winding up with roots and cabbages, as is appropriate for this neck of the woods this time of year. Apologies for the wacky array of greens choices, but we had to take what we could get out there. We rode the wave of end-of-season greens for as long as we could, but the unseasonably cold weather this past week did most of them in. Covering crops with row cover works well to protect them from spot frosts, but five or six nights in a row well below freezing plus a couple of days where the temps never got out of the thirties? Too much! We’re happy to pass along what we can, however, and we’re really thrilled and surprised that we can send everyone of with some herbs. Cilantro and dill in late October? An unexpected treat!

As the season wraps up, Sonya, Lydia, Kate and I want to thank you all–and by “all” I mean our regular customers at the Portland and Bridgton markets and our wonderful CSA members–for your support of the farm this season. It’s been a long, tough season, but we love doing this and we love knowing that we’re nourishing the folks in our community. For you CSAers, if you haven’t yet filled out the end-of-season survey, please take a moment to do so and e-mail it or snail mail it back to us. It’s very important that we have your take on the season–what you liked and disliked, what worked and what didn’t–so we can improve our farm and your CSA experience in the years to come. In a future blog post here, I will break down the survey results and discuss any trends that we notice.

A few of our CSA members have already asked about joining us again for next season. What we will do is e-mail all of our members this season with a renewal form. This will probably happen sometime in early November. If you’d like to join the CSA for next season, you can just fill out the renewal form and mail it back to us with a modest deposit (last season it was $100 for returning members). Again, details will be forthcoming in the next few weeks once we’ve caught our breaths!

A few of you have also asked what we’ll be doing now that the season is done. Can we kick back and relax now? Well, yes and no! There’s still plenty to do around here: chickens to care for and get ready for the winter, beds to mow, gear to stow away, wood to cut and stack, paperwork and prep for next season, etc. Sonya has also begun a stint at the L.L. Bean call center in Lewiston. She’ll be working there a few days a week until almost Christmas, so I’ll be Mr. Mom at home, keeping an eye on the farm and hangin’ with Lydi. In a change from last season, we’ll also still be marketing into the off-season. I plan to continue traveling down to Portland for the Wednesday Monument Square market to sell eggs. I may go every other week, however, and I’ll post dates when I’ll be there here on the blog. Same thing for Bridgton, where they are starting a winter market each Saturday in the Community Center behind the Magic Lantern Theater. But enough about work…we do plan to relax and travel, too! We’re planning a road trip getaway, beginning in Florida for Christmas (both our dads are down there) and continuing into the new year with a westward push. We’d love to get all the way to the west coast, visiting friends and family and seeing the sights along the way.

Another plan I have for the off-season is to jazz up this website. I’d like to add more content, especially photos, and improve the layout. Our friend, Ezra Ball, got the site up and running for us and understands this stuff much better than I, so I’m sure I’ll be bugging him for assistance and guidance. As for the blog, I plan to keep on posting stuff about what we’re up to and any other noteworthy food- or farming-related tidbits that come my way. I can’t promise weekly postings–every couple of weeks might be more realistic–but please keep checking back!

Our farm potlucks will continue, too. We plan to have another one sometime in the first half of November, then probably take a break for December and January and pick them up again once we get back from our travels. I’ll announce dates here on the blog, and we’ll send out e-mail announcements as well.

Speaking of meals, I want to mention a community bean suppah that’s coming up on Oct. 24th at the Casco Village Church of Christ on Meadow Road (rt. 121) in Casco. Proceeds from the meal will benefit the local food pantry and other community social programs. The costs are $7 for adults and $4 for kids under 10, and the meal will happen between 5 PM and 6:30 PM. And, 20 pounds of Summit Springs Farm carrots will be part of the feast! For more info., check out beansuppah.org.

Finally, one final plea for your leaves! We still need mulch to get our newly planted garlic beds set for the winter, plus for our perennial herb plots. If you’ve raked and bagged your leaves, don’t take them to the dump! Bring ‘em here to the farm, and we’ll put them to good use! If necessary, we can come and pick them up, too…just let us know.

Thanks again, everyone! Enjoy the veggies!

Wow! Mid-October is somehow already here, and it’s week #19 for the CSA. Yet another rainy harvest day has brought forth the following:

1 bag (approx. 2.5 lbs) of winter squash
1.5 lb bag of carrots
1 lb bag of parsnips
1 lb bag of beets -OR- turnips
1 kohlrabi
1 bunch of mustard greens
1 head of Napa cabbage -OR- bok choi -OR- cabbage
1/2 lb bag of salad mix

Things are really winding down now, folks. One more week to go! Today was a chilly harvest…Sonya is still trying to warm her hands up after much cutting and bunching of greens in this morning’s rain. Kate and I are trying to get our hands clean after harvesting over 200 pounds of root crops yesterday. It’s looking pretty empty out in those fields…

As fall blows in with its crisp days and colorful leaves, the general farm work begins to lighten and we can start reflecting on the season that is about to pass. We always hope to have learned some lessons and managed to get a little better at what we’re doing here at Summit Springs Farm.

What a season it has been! Having Lydia sure made things a lot more interesting around here. Looking back to late last winter, we were really stressing out about how the season would go with a new baby. We started out the season wearing her while working out in the fields. That worked pretty well for the first few months, but the more mobile she got, the less she wanted to hang out on our backs, unable to dig her hands into the soil. Soon we began to just switch off, with one of us working while the other hung out with Miss Lydi. This really cut our available work time down, but it was necessary. We are very grateful to Sonya’s mom, Sandy, who comes over and spends Monday mornings with Lydia and to our wonderful neighbors, Litha and Larry Thurlow, who watch Lydia over at their house on our busy harvest mornings, each Tuesday and Friday. But most of all, thank god for Kate Jones! Kate is our apprentice this year and the farm’s very first apprentice. She has been a strong force here, and we don’t know how we would have made it through without her hard work, great attitude, and willingness to do just about anything. We hope that we will be so lucky in the years to come! Kate has gone back to school in Bridgton but is still helping out and will be living here at the farm until sometime in February or March. Her presence this winter will allow us to get out of here and do some traveling! But I digress…

The big story this season, of course, was the rain. We were so optimistic, too, back in the spring that this would be a solid season. We had the use of our greenhouse from Day 1, the seedlings we started in there were strong and healthy, and surely it couldn’t be as bad as last year’s wet summer, right? Well, it rained and rained and rained and rained, through all of June and into July…it was unseasonably cool, too. We were very fearful that this entire season would be a wash…pun intended…or that at least an early ending would be inevitable. But, somehow, we made it. Some crops like strawberries, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow summer squash, garlic, and assorted greens actually did very well. Others, like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, and peppers did very poorly. And the tomatoes, the poor tomatoes… The earliest-ever appearance of late blight in the state, plus the prevalence of other diseases that thrive in moist, cool conditions did a number on tomato growing statewide. Here, we lost every last one of our field tomatoes, about 500 plants. Our greenhouse tomatoes somehow avoided the blight and did pretty well under the circumstances, allowing all of our CSA folks to get at least some cherry and big tomatoes this summer.

The rain, and the sea of weeds that the rains begot, dropped our overall yields down. Many of our CSA shares during the summer were lighter than we would have liked, both in terms of quantities and variety. Even more affected, though, were our markets in Portland and Bridgton. It was many a week were we had to pass along just about everything we could get out of the fields to the CSA and had very little left over to sell at market. Thank goodness for our hens and their eggs! Having lots of eggs to sell kept us afloat on numerous occasions. Another consequence of the rainy spring/early summer was that we were unable to get some fall crops in on time. With only a couple of weeks left in the season, we’re anxiously hoping our cabbage, beets, and dry beans size up quick!

There have been some great successes, however. Our greens this fall, especially the Asian greens like Napa cabbage and bok choy, have been amazing. We decided to get a bunch of these greens going in the greenhouse for transplanting once everything dried out, and we’re very glad we did. Surprisingly, some of these crops have blown us away. It has been our habit in the past to direct seed broccoli raab, i.e. planting the seeds directly into the field. We now know that starting it in the greenhouse and transplanting it out after a few weeks more than doubles the yield (are you sick of it yet??) We probably wouldn’t have figured that out if it weren’t for those rains. And, in spite of the smaller yields, we will hit our goal of 20 full weeks of veggies for the CSA. That’s with a 100% increase in membership from last year and growing on just slightly more land…not too bad.

We tried some new crops out this season, including royal burgundy beans, tongue of fire shell beans, shell peas, sweet potatoes, and daikon radish, and we again tried to make it happen for melons without using black plastic mulch. We are still waiting and trying to be patient for those tongue of fire beans. They were sown late because of the rains, so we aren’t sure if they will make it or not. We’ll try them again next year. The royal burgundy beans were an excellent addition…tasty, colorful, and well-producing. They will be back again next season. Shell peas didn’t do so well. We got enough for ourselves but not for you. This may have been because of one or more of our little woodchuck friends. Also, the few we got weren’t very sweet, so we may pass on them for next season. The sweet potatoes also did not do well. We planted one 100-ft bed, and the resulting tubers weren’t even big enough to bother harvesting. Not too much of a surprise there, since sweet potatoes do best in hot, dry conditions! The daikons have done very well and seem to be popular with our CSAers. A huge benefit of planting daikon, besides how tasty they are and their great benefits to your liver, is that they really aerate the soil. Those massive roots sometimes grow more than two feet underground. Our farm was in conventional hay for years before we purchased the place. The farmers hay with massive tractors, creating a great deal of compaction in the soil. The daikons and other root crops help, so we are happy to include them in our rotation and our stir frys! Melons? We will keep trying for musk melons, but we’re not sure that the watermelons are going to make it here without some kind of season extension. We will keep it in mind for the future, though.

I want to leave the crops for a paragraph or two and talk about some other noteworthy events at the farm this season. Back in June, Sonya’s dad, Ron, transformed the back corner of our little barn into a super-insulated, air-conditioner-powered veggie cooler. This cooler has been working out great. It keeps our veggies fresher for our CSA members and market customers and has given us some much-needed harvesting flexibility. Also, this year we added an off-the-farm CSA drop in the parking lot of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Allen Avenue in Portland. We have about 14 CSA members who pick up their veggies at the church each Friday afternoon. For us, it’s worked out great, and we’re happy to have recently been given the go-ahead to use the parking lot again next season. This season, in addition to the usual monthly potlucks, we decided to have our first ever weeding party, and we will definitely be doing that again. The dedicated and cheerful group who turned out really helped us get a handle on some weedy messes out in the fields, and we had a lot of fun in the process!

Because of the bad weather the last two seasons, we have decided to keep our CSA numbers the same for next season (around 60 available shares). However, we do plan to expand our field space some and possibly add another market. We are hoping this will create fewer sleepless nights for us, as we tend to stress out about our ability to feed our members when the climate isn’t agreeable. We’re concerned about this trend and wonder what to expect going forward. Was this just a couple of fluke seasons or are we starting to see the tangible results of climate change? We know things may get harder, but we will try our best to adapt and learn to farm in our changing climate while growing in ways that decrease the amount of fossil fuels being used.

Some exciting things are on tap for next season. We are planning to put in a pick-your-own high bush blueberry patch. We are investing in the first 20 plants this fall and will be planting them next spring! We are contemplating rhubarb. Thoughts? Anyone? We will continue to expand our strawberry patch. We are also planning to construct a portable hoophouse. This simple idea involves using some pvc pipes hooped over three or four beds and covered with greenhouse plastic to make a basic hot house. No doors, no heat. We are hoping this will make our peppers and eggplant more productive and happy, and it’s another way to protect our tomatoes. It would provide extra warmth, protection from frost, and some protection from airborne fungal diseases like the late blight that hit us this season.

That’s it from here! We appreciate everyone’s support and understanding during this challenging season. Hearing your words of encouragement and seeing your excited faces at pick-ups and markets makes it all worthwhile! We encourage everyone to share your thoughts about the season via the farm survey and/or here on the blog.

It’s week #18, and your CSA share includes the following:

1.5 lb bag of winter squash
1.5 lb bag of carrots
1 daikon radish -OR- 1 kohlrabi
1 bunch of Red Russian kale -OR- Swiss chard -OR- broccoli raab
1 head of Napa cabbage -OR- bok choi -OR- vitamin green
1 head of lettuce
1/2 lb bag of braising mix
Herbs: 1 bunch of cilantro -OR- dill
1 head of garlic

The lettuce options this week are Red Sails or green romaine. The creatively named vitamin green is new to us…we’ve never grown it, and before the other night, had never tasted it, either. The flavor is reminiscent of mustard greens but milder. Let us know what you think!

Your winter squash this week is a mix of delicata (oblong) and sweet dumpling (squat like an acorn squash). There was some confusion for some members last season about whether or not the squash is edible. It most certainly is! (They may have had gourds in mind.) If you’re unfamiliar with these two varieties, get ready for a treat. Delicata and sweet dumpling are our favs here at the farm, the sweetest by far of all the squash we grow. I’m stating the very obvious here: the squash is small. It was yet another casualty of the wet, wet, wet spring, more specifically of the weeds that the rain brought forth and which we were unable to deal with in a timely fashion because of the mud. Our pal, Kent, Connecticut farmer Megan Haney, has a way of looking on the bright side, and a recent e-newsletter of hers mentioned that her squash was tiny, too. But tiny means quick cooking, and she touted the 15-minute roast times for her diminutive delicatas and small sweet dumplings. Amen to that!

As you’ve all noticed by now, our greens–kale, chard, lettuce, broccoli raab, bok choi, napa cabbage, etc.–have been doing fabulously for the past several weeks. Alas, some critters have found their way to the party. Our old pals the slugs are back…not quite as enthusiastically as they were in the spring, but back nonetheless, and enjoying the kale, lettuce, and cabbage. Also, we’re having quite a time with leaf hoppers, tiny little insects that have been going after the cabbage, bok choi, raab, and turnip greens. They are responsible for the little brown spots on the leaves. The greens’ flavor is unaffected, but they look a little bad, and we apologize. I plan to try and train Bear the cat to take a break from rodents and turn his hunting instincts toward the hoppers. I figure if he cruises through the rows of greens with his mouth open just so, he could capture and consume thousands of the little suckers per pass, a la a hungry blue whale gracefully gliding through a school of krill.

I mentioned to a number of you with some certainty that the share this week would include parsnips. Sonya made the call to hold off for another week, however, so apologies to those who are chomping at the bit for the ’snips. You will get them soon, I promise!

You sure do have to be careful what you wish for around here, weather-wise. After the spring/early summer deluge, we prayed for dry weather and got it, with much of September being completely rain free. Then we prayed for rain and have seen much of it these past couple of weeks. We got 2 inches this past weekend alone, throwing a bit of a wrench in our spading and planting plans (the planting in this case being cover crops, plus a couple beds of garlic for next season). Now it looks as though another dose of the wet stuff is on the way for tomorrow. Ugh.

After a week of hemming and hawing about a date for this month’s potluck, we have decided (and this is, I admit, a bit lame) to skip the October gathering. Relatives are coming to town next week, the season is winding down, and even though October has just begun, it just seems like too much to try to squeeze it in. Stay tuned, however, for we will get one scheduled for November.

It’s week #17, and your CSA share includes the following:

1 bunch of turnips
1 bunch of carrots
1 daikon radish
1 bunch of Red Russian kale
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1 head of Napa cabbage -OR- 1 head of bok choi
1 head of lettuce
1/2 lb bag of braising mix
1/2 lb bag of pears (this week’s on-the-farm half share members only)

Roots and greens, greens and roots…autumn must be a-comin’!  The braising mix this week contains mizuna, tot soi, Red Russian kale, and red mustard. The lettuces on offer this week are Red Sails, red romaine, and green romaine.

We survived the first frost of the season.  I’m not sure exactly how cold it got on Saturday morning (or how long it stayed there), but there was no doubt about it:  The leftover water for the chickens was partially frozen, and the hayfields were white and frosty when I got up.  Luckily, we knew it was coming and zipped into action after the Friday harvest, covering vulnerable greens and beans with remay.  A little insulation goes a long way.  Some crops, like kale, carrots, and parsnips, can take a frost and will be all the sweeter once harvested due to the freeze.

Hope some of you out there had a chance to hit the Common Ground Fair up in Unity this past weekend.  This is the 32nd year of the fair, and we ventured up on Sunday in spite of a grim weather forecast.  Happily. the heavy rains never came, just off and on drizzle.  The crowds were sparse, and we managed to see and do more than we ever have at the fair.  As an added bonus, we met up with some old friends and fellow apprentices from our Connecticut days and had a chance to catch up and swap stories.  Lydia had fun, too, especially in the kid’s area, the show animal barns, and while watching the incredible drumming ladies of Inanna.

Recipes!  We want your recipes!  Got an old family favorite that became even better this season with the farm’s fresh veggies?  Did you discover a new way to cook familiar veggies, or did you perhaps stumble upon a revolutionary new way to cook something unfamiliar (Desperation can breed creativity:  “What the hell do I do with this kohlrabi?!  Eureka!”)  One goal of mine for this winter is to jazz up the farm’s website, and we’d really like to keep our collection of recipes growing.  For some veggies, we currently have only a single recipe listed; for others, alas, we have nothing at all.  We’d love to hear from our members and find out what you’re doing with all those veggies!  Send us an e-mail, or better yet, post any and all recipes right here on the blog.  In the off season, I’ll copy them all over onto the Recipes! page for safekeeping.  Thanks in advance!

Finally, let’s hear it for the rain!  Ironic, eh, after the endless moisture of June/July?  We’ve needed it, though…the fields have been downright dusty, and the greens during last week’s harvests were looking wilted before they were even cut!  So, we’re grateful for some wet weather as we gear up for October and the final few weeks of the season.

Again, we need leaves for fall mulching!  They’re starting to drift down now, so if you don’t need them, we’d love to have them!

I was reminded by Sonya this morning as we harvested to “stop and smell the roses”, as the saying goes. No roses here, and now it’s a bit hazy and overcast, but the morning was lovely…cool and sunny, all the greens soaked with dew. Son was struck by the number of birds out and about this morning, the sounds of their wings gently stirring the silence. By this point in the season, your intrepid farmers are pretty beat…we’ve been going full on since April, and, especially this week as we’ve all been battling head colds, we find ourselves rather exhausted. However, a few moments looking around on a morning like this one, a few deep breaths before settling into the rhythm of the harvest, and we remember why we do this. Why? Because it’s the best job in the world! It’s week #16, and your CSA share this week includes the following:

2 lbs russet potatoes
1 bunch of leeks
1 bunch of celeriac
1 daikon radish -OR- 1 bunch of French breakfast radishes
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1 head of Napa cabbage
1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of oregano -OR- sage
1/2 lb bag of pears (half share members only)

This is officially it for the potatoes, folks, so savor them! Now, what the heck is a daikon radish? It’s an asian radish, popular in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cooking. It can be used raw, sliced or grated into a salad. It can also be cubed and added to your favorite stir-fry. Alas, there’s a gap on our ever-evolving recipes page where daikon radish should be, and I will try to remedy that shortly. In the meantime, try searching for daikon at the Epicurious website, an informative and recipe-packed site that Sonya loves. Finally, we hope everyone is loving the broccoli raab. We remain pleasantly amazed by how well it’s doing and have no choice but to pass along the bounty to you all. If it’s too much of a good thing all at once, though, you can chop up the raab and freeze it. Apparently, blanching is not necessary as long as you use the raab within about six months.

This is long, long overdue, but I want to write a bit about the conditions of the grassy area in front of the barn where everyone parks when they pick up their shares here at the farm. By now, I’m sure you’re aware of The Dip. Last season, there was hardly a bump at all where the road meets the grass, but all of the rain earlier this summer created a heck of a rut there. A couple of people have mentioned that they’ve actually damaged their cars when pulling in or out. We’re mortified by this and plan to get some crushed rock in there next spring to fill the gap. In the meantime, unless your vehicle has plenty of clearance, we recommend parking on the side of the road and not pulling in! Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience!

September is fading fast, and the farm has seen a number of changes recently. The greenhouse has been weeded, cleaned up, and more or less put to bed for the winter. We’ve been busy mowing down crop residue, too, then spading the beds and in some cases sowing cover crop seed (oats and peas, winter rye, or vetch, depending on what we plan to use those beds for in the future). The chickens have been on the move as we haul their coop around the fields to empty beds. There, the gals can eat up the weeds and crop residue and give the soil a healthy application of poop for next year’s crops. Also, a big, big thanks to Glenn Bolduc, our neighbor and friend and fellow farmer, for his weekend delivery of several dump truck loads of composted cow manure. We’ll be spreading that pile of love around Field 1 very soon. (Check out Glenn’s work at Spruce Bay Farm.)

Have a great week, everyone, and enjoy the veggies!

The 15th pick-up of the season falls on the 15th of the month? It was meant to be! Your CSA share this week includes the following:

.7 lbs of mixed beans
Cucumbers: 1 large -OR- 2 small
1 bunch of celeriac
1 bunch of broccoli raab -OR- red mustard greens
1 bunch of Swiss chard -OR- Red Russian kale
1 bok choi -OR- 1 head of Napa cabbage
1/2 lb bag of salad mix
1 head of lettuce
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes
1 head of garlic
1 lb of yellow pears -OR- cantaloupe (full share members only)

Those lovely bags of beans are a mix of Provider greens, yellow wax, and Royal Burgundy purple. Alas, some of the fun is lost in cooking since the purple beans turn a dark green. Do an impromptu taste test, as we did here at the farm over dinner last week, and decide which beans you like best! The pears this week are from one of the trees in our yard. When fully ripe, they turn yellow…most of them need a little more time, so be patient! The cantaloupes are ready to go, however. You full share folks picking up in Portland and Bridgton received your cantaloupe last week, so there won’t be any in this week’s share. We hope to have enough pears in the coming weeks for our half share members, too. Potato lovers, never fear! We have so many greens coming in that we decided to take a little break from potatoes. They’ll be back next week along with leeks, so dust off your favorite potato leek soup recipes and get ready!

This week’s share includes the following:

1 1/2 pounds of potatoes: choose All Blues or Gold Rush russets
1 lb bag of green tomatoes
2 cucumbers
1/2 lb bag of onions
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1 head of red or green Romaine lettuce
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes
1 bell pepper
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of basil -OR- 1 bunch of mint

The potatoes this week are a choice between those wacky Blues or Gold Rush russets. Apologies once again for size; some of the russets sized up quite well but others did not (see also: onions). Next week will probably be it for this year’s potatoes, so enjoy them while they last! The greens are coming back, and we’re thrilled to have lettuce to distribute again. The fall might feel a lot like the spring as we bring back many of greens you’ve seen before, including more raab, kale, chard, bok choi, and Napa cabbage. The greens are looking happy and healthy.

We have officially planted all that we are going to plant this year. The greenhouse is empty of seedlings, and Kate spent Saturday unclipping, cutting down, and removing all the tomato plants. The greenhouse is now sealed up tight for several weeks of solarization, a process of superheating the soil to kill any diseases contained therein. Between that and a winter’s worth of freezing, we figure we’ll kill off any lurking problems and create a healthy environment for next year’s plants.

We harvested our modest crop of melons last week, and the news there is not so good. Our watermelons didn’t do much this year, and I don’t think we’ll be able to distribute any to the CSA. We did get some musk melons (better known as cantaloupe), though…we’re hoping a few more will ripen off the vine so we can pass them along.

We also harvested pie pumpkins and will pass those along to you with the rest of our winter squash, which we hope to harvest on Friday. They didn’t do so well, either…much of that field was underwater back in June. We won’t know for sure until we get the harvest in, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to give everyone a few pounds of mixed squashes and pumpkins. Last year (another bad one for squash) everyone got about five pounds.

Our Celli spading machine is on the fritz again, due to a couple of sheared screws. This goes with the tractoring territory. It happens all the time, and bolts and screws breaking are much better that other important pieces breaking! However, the Celli is Italian which means that all her bits and pieces are metric and hard to find around here. Sonya spent a lot of time last week trying to track these screws down, and finally had to order them from K.L. Jack down in Portland. I’ll be picking them up tomorrow after the Portland Farmers’ Market. We want to get the spader fixed so we can work our empty beds and get cover crops in.

Also, please remember that the farm needs your mulch in the form of leaves and “clean” (not treated with chemical fertilizers or pesticides) grass clippings…if you have any to spare, let us know! Ciao for now!

This week’s share includes the following:

1 pound of fingerling potatoes
cucumbers
1/2 lb bag of zucchini and yellow summer squash -OR- 1/4 lb bag of bell peppers
1 bunch of broccoli raab
1/4 lb bag of braising mix
1 jalapeno pepper
1/2 lb bag of onions
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of basil -OR- 1 bunch of thyme

The potatoes this week are those fancy fingerlings, a variety that has been all the rage in the gourmet food world for the past few years. They are wonderful roasted! Be sure to check out the potato recipes page for some ideas for your fingerlings. The cukes are finally beginning to slow down, so folks this week will get three smallish cukes or one large and one small. As I mentioned last week, your bag of wee onions should be refrigerated as they are not fully cured yet. The braising mix this week has kale, mizuna, tat soi, red mustard, and snap pea shoots. The pea shoots are an experiment…please let us know what you think!

With the turning of the month comes the apparent turning of the seasons, as the past week has been much cooler and less humid. The approach of fall has us scrambling to get our raspberries and strawberries well weeded and mulched for the winter. With this in mind, plus other mulching needs in the near future (next year’s garlic, herbs, etc.) we need your help. We would LOVE to take any leaves or grass clippings off your hands to use here at the farm. If you can get them here to us that would be great, but we are also willing to pick up mulch if need be. We’re happy to take grass clippings as long as your lawn hasn’t been treated with any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. This is very important, since mulching with anything else could threaten our goal of getting the farm certified organic next spring. We’re also on the hunt for manure sources, so if any of you reading this have any yourselves or any suggestions on where to find some, we would appreciate it!

Our next farm potluck is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19th between the hours of 5 and 9 PM. Bring along a dish to share, some comfy outdoor chairs, musical instruments, etc. This is a rain or shine event, but hopefully the weather will be nice, and we can eat outside and enjoy a bonfire afterwards!